To wish I’d known how crap and miserable being a lone parent is?

[RibenaRibena]

It’s completely miserable and lonely and I think people kid themselves saying how great it is! I am lonely, miserable, have no money, getting old and feel old beyond my years, no free time to myself ever, haven’t even had sex in a decade! Facing another birthday and Xmas alone, every weekend the same old. I know people say it isn’t forever but it’s a bloody long time.

All of the things I suggested and many that others have suggested were to help the OP to fundamentally change her situation over time. Nobody’s going to have a magic bullet to miraculously make everything easy immediately but there are certainly steps she can take to improve things significantly and gradually address the issues she’s raised about having no time to herself, little money, etc. Ultimately wallowing will make the situation worse whereas taking positive steps to improve her situation will improve things both objectively and most likely also improve how she feels about her life over time.

If he’s not declaring rental income of over £7,500 per year (which presumably it must be if it’s sufficient for him not to work and he’s renting out multiple rooms in his house) then this is tax evasion and you should report him to HMRC. They will investigate and once he’s forced to declare his true income (plus pay a fine) he’ll also be forced to pay some maintenance via CMS.

If he’s not declaring rental income of over £7,500 per year (which presumably it must be if it’s sufficient for him not to work and he’s renting out multiple rooms in his house) then this is tax evasion and you should report him to HMRC. They will investigate and once he’s forced to declare his true income (plus pay a fine) he’ll also be forced to pay some maintenance via CMS.

Not if it is cash, which is highly probable.

The thread is basically I Will Get Pissy Because You Ignored My Helpful Advice.

If only it was that simple. HMRC are not interested if you don’t have any evidence.

Multiple people registered to the address will provide the investigators with evidence!

I was initially dismissing the posts that suggested some mental health issues as tactless but these latests revelations are casting a completely new light into the situation. OP has opened threads with other names with more specific details about her situation that now make me genuinely worried about the well being of the children.
Paging MNHQ for them to take a look to the thread and do anything in their power to help this person and the above all her children.

My children are fine but thanks for your concern 🙄

And I need to have evidence of this, which I don’t, they don’t just go off hearsay. (without evidence this is what it’s classed as.)

If only we could do the same! Mine just came back from a 2 week all inclusive holiday and told me on Friday I was lucky he was having dc1 this weekend as he was tired from all of his travelling! I’ve learned to just grit my teeth now as I’m sure he says things to wind me up on purpose.

I’m glad you’ve met a nice man now. I was briefly seeing a single dad for a while and was also very pleasantly surprised how much of a good dad he was. I’ve just turned 28 but have given up meeting anyone for now. I only seem to attract cheats or users anyways. 😫

HMrC have access to the electoral register, and registered addresses on payslips and benefit claims so if multiple other people live at his property this will be easy for them to establish. You do not have to have proof yourself to report suspected tax evasion.

Careful, people will accuse you of being 'unpleasant' because you had the audacity to notice a pattern. I too am.very concerned for the children.

How can you have no friends at all? Surely it’s possible to make some at work, at the school gate, at kids’ hobbies? Or reconnect with old school / uni friends? Or neighbours - anything?

1. she doesn’t work. She’s a FT carer for her child.
2. I am sure she does some dropping off at the school gate but is mostly preoccupied with her other child. The school gate can be hit and miss with friendships in any event.
3. see point one.

@AliceMaforethought I am not saying you are unpleasant. Your posts to this OP have, though.

A lot of the time people don’t need endless solutions. They are often impractical and don’t take into account finances and logistics. Sometimes people do need to have a good old rant. That’s only half the picture. I remember a couple of years ago having a shocking weekend with my then three year old and I posted on here in anger and frustration. The posters who got this and talked my down helped and meant I could resolve and repair: the posters who didn’t and went for the pious ‘you don’t even like him … I feel sorry for your children’ didn’t.

That is why I say anyone genuinely concerned for the children starts with the mother. If the mother feels supported and helped she can then be a better mother. If she feels attacked and put down, guess what, opposite happens.

Is the OP one of the most relentlessly negative? Yes, she is. And she can be, it’s her prerogative. Doesn’t harm you, does it?

Yes, family makes an enormous difference. I have that now but no guarantees about the future as I have to move away soon. I feel for you OP.

For me, nothing prepared me for the financial shock. Not having two incomes is so very hard. The mental load is tricky but the single income is far worse.

I agree. The op can't even go out to work.

I am absolutely appalled at the father of these children too. How does he live with himself.

No suggestions from me, I've no idea what the answer is.

Ok. But being angry at the father won’t change things practically or help the OP psychologically.

Her child has been out of school for three years. If she did not choose to homeschool (it certainly doesn’t sound like this is what she wanted) then the LA is breaking the law. She needs to seek advice from SENDIAS, SOSSEN, read the relevant legislation per my earlier post, and take the LA to tribunal to get her child an appropriate school place. OP what has been happening with the LA? Even with the backlog of tribunals the situation should not have dragged on for three years with no formal education for your child whatsoever.

Addressing this and getting her child into an appropriate school would instantly give the OP a break for 6+ hrs 5 days per week which obviously would make a huge difference to her wellbeing so I don’t understand why posters are criticising others for suggesting she prioritises dealing with this. If she explains the current situation I’m sure many here who’ve been through similar situations can offer useful advice and support to help her takes steps to set resolving this issue in motion.

Then she will have lots of respite and time to work and/ or retrain which will improve her financial situation which she also stated was one of the factors making her miserable. Again, lots of other lone parents here will have done this and be juggling work and parenting children with disabilities so can offer support and advice.

My advice about reporting the children’s father’s tax evasion is also a possible route to improve her financial situation if he’s underdeclaring his income to avoid CMS. It doesn’t sound like he’s a criminal mastermind with some complex tax scheme, he’s simply underdeclaring income to HMRC which is very, very easy for them to evidence from other records so why would she not make an anonymous report about this? Perhaps it might come to nothing but surely it’s worth trying. HMRC specifically encourage people to report any tax evasion of which they become aware and specifically state that evidence proving the evasion is not required to do so: that is what their investigations are to establish.

What is baffling is why the OP is refusing to engage with any of these ideas, or suggestions from other posters that she seeks advice and support from charitable organisations set up precisely to support lone parents/ parents of children with disabilities. It’s fairly pointless for someone to complain that their situation makes them miserable if they refuse to even try to do anything to improve it.

I think you’re spot on here

I am going to tribunal, the court date is next year, the reason why it has taken so long is because the LA ignored me for 2 years asking for an annual review they would not do one and only did one when I put in a complaint after calling and emailing constantly asking for an annual review, once your child is out of school they wash their hands of you, and tribunal isn’t till next year which we will probably lose anyway so please don’t make out that is a simple solution. My daughter is not going to a mainstream school.

There’s no need to be defensive @RibenaRibena. I am genuinely trying to help. It seems that getting your daughter into appropriate provision so she can attend school again is the essential first step to start improving everything for all of you. This must be awful for her also (one of mine was out of school for months and that was bad enough). I know that LAs will do everything possible to obstruct, believe me (!). It’s a disgrace.

Why do you think you will lose the tribunal? Parents countrywide win 98-99% of SEND tribunals (a statistic that has remained unchanged for years) because the LAs are so lawless and given she’s already out of education and has an EHCP with which they clearly aren’t complying it sounds like your case should be strong? Do you have an advocate to help you navigate the system e.g. from SOSSEN? If you have enough evidence then you could request a paper hearing to speed things up?

In the meantime, separately make a formal complaint that they are not complying with their responsibilities per the Education Act. If a child is out of school for 15 days or longer they must provide a full time education outside of school. You haven’t chosen to home school so this is still their legal responsibility so they are in breach of the law in not doing so.

It just seems to me that this should be the first priority, to do everything possible with external advice from experts to try to win that case because then life will be so much better for you also, with time to rest/ work/ retrain and improve your finances, feel less burned out and have some child-free time.

My case isn’t strong. Her ehcp says mainstream. The percentage that win at tribunal is mostly made up of refusal to assess so the figures look better than they are. Her ehcp is set up for mainstream and she has no school named on it so I can’t even send her to a school even if I wanted to as no school is named. I can’t afford private assessment so we will not win at tribunal as I don’t have money to throw at it like a lot of people. I made a complaint to the LA about them delaying the annual review and leaving my daughter without an education and the person who is representing the LA at the tribunal is the person the has responded to the complaint 🤷🏼‍♀️ so I am too embarrassed to even read it I assumed it would be someone independent. Her ehcp isn’t worth the paper it’s written on to be honest.

Well I’ve just read the response and the special school said they weren’t suitable apparently the one I was fighting for so there you go 🤷🏼‍♀️

The whole system is a joke. I share your frustration with it, I honestly don’t know how these LA staff sleep at night. What do they do, go home and pat themselves on the back and tell themselves “I did really well today, I denied five disabled children the chance to go to school!”. A special place in hell awaits them all, IMO.

Local Authorities have a statutory duty to respond to formal complaints, which is separate from the SEND tribunals process (which are purely focused on compliance with the SEND Regulations 2014). Your LA are also in breach of the Education Act (by not providing her with any education at all) and the Children and Families Act (because they’re not communicating with you). There is a statutory process they must follow to respond to formal complaints and it can’t be conflated with the SEND tribunals process. They have 3 months to respond to a stage 1 complaint (which will always be a nonsense rebuttal written by someone internal and complicit). Read the response and if it doesn’t address the issues you’ve raised then escalated it to a stage 2 complaint. They then have to get an independent expert to address the complaint. Ask SOSSEN or similar to help you draft the stage 2 complaint setting out clearly the paragraphs of the relevant legislation that they are breaching. Depending on the disabilities your daughter has, the disability-specific charities for her condition may also be able to provide advocacy and support with this.

In terms of the tribunal, do you have some experts like this helping you? Even as someone who is familiar with how law is drafted and functions etc (though not education law, until I was met with this) I have needed help to navigate the system from somebody used to it who knows all of the dirty tactics that the LAs use to try to circumvent their legal responsibilities. It really is disgusting that it’s left to parents to enforce their children’s legal right to access education but you need to utilise all help available to fight them.

Also, issue a subject access request. You can do this online via the Information Commissioner as an online request specifying dates (since the issue began - perhaps when you requested the emergency annual review from the LA or perhaps earlier depending what happened?) and your name, your daughter’s name, and all documents that the Local Authority holds about either of you. They have to provide this information to you per GDPR. You should specifically state that this should include all of their internal and external emails, meeting agendas and notes, system notes, phone records and any other documents that relate to either of you. This should be quite revealing about what they are doing. By issuing a subject access request, I obtained proof that the Local Authority’s appointed educational psychologist was colluding with them about how to misrepresent matters to the SEND tribunal, for example.

Have you been able to find any schools that you think would be appropriate for her that would be willing to offer her a place that you can request at tribunal are named on the EHCP?

I really feel for you, it is such a stressful and broken system set up to try to deny children access to education as much as possible and it’s completely exhausting fighting it all. So many children are being failed by the LAs, deliberately. I makes me enraged.

Sorry I’ve just seen your update. Are there others that you can go and look around? Speaking to them in person about your daughter may really help them to understand why she would be a good match for their provision. Some will even do a trial day so they could see how she manages in their environment.

No there is no others. I give up now.